ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのPresidential Lecture Series with Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados

A New World Order Vital To Achieve Peace, Mia Amor Mottley Mar 23, 2022

Thank you very much everyone and thank you my sister for those very kind words um all you've done is to explain why I've gotten so great and sort of such a short space of time.

Director General Tatiana Valuevaya, my brother Director General Tedros Gabriesis. My sister secretary General Rebecca, I know she had to leave to go to a meeting with the UN Secretary General and in your absence we will be here.

I really want distinguished guests all and all who are listening. I really want to thank you for the opportunity to be here and let me first madam Director General congratulate you on all of the work that you have been doing and the leadership that you provided at this most critical time for the world, given all of the challenges that we are facing we are confident that your erudition but also your experience and your heart will make all of the difference that we need now, because if the WTO is to remain faithful to its mandate and to bring prosperity and stability to the people of this world, and to ensure that international trade does not have the obstacles that it has.

Now, then your work must be a success buttress by our all of our cooperation by keeping a higher purpose in front of –us. I'd also like to thank you for the honor that you've bestowed on my country by inviting me to deliver this lecture this afternoon and this is the inaugural presidential lecture and Barbados is truly humbled by our opportunity to share perspectives from a small island developing state, because our voice is critical in this debate since in many instances we are on the front line of these challenging times.

The very existence of our states depends on a few things, but the one existential crisis that we all face is that of climate and indeed you will therefore forgive me, all of you please I ask for your forgiveness if at this juncture I share with you that I would like to dedicate this lecture to someone who I knew all my life but who regrettably passed on friday evening Dr. Hugh Seeley, who was the lead negotiator on behalf of the alliance of small island states with respect to Article 6 coming out of the Paris Agreement.

His loss, will be not just that of small island developing states, but the void that he leaves will be felt by all who fight to save this planet earth for his voice was at the front line of that for the last 20 years.

My friends, underlying the theme before us today is the recognition that the global order is not working. It simply is not delivering in the areas of critical importance necessary to achieve the goal of sustainable development for the majority of our world's population, and I want to submit to you that it is not achieving for our people as still too many people in this world live in conditions of hunger of poverty of indignity and of inequality. If we are to achieve prosperity for all then we must really try because if not, it will remain a distant aspiration far too distant for too many and let alone, those who have no access to technology or who have not been able to benefit from social cohesion within their countries.

Simply we are not delivering for our planet either as daily widespread climate degradation whether in the form of droughts or in the form of floods and hurricanes continue to undermine our capacity to support both the present and future generations.

Similarly, we are not achieving the objective of partnership beyond the words that are used by many we use the word partnership glibly, but where is the example of it for my friends greed continues regrettably to motivate too many that we are more concerned with generating profits than saving people is perhaps the greatest condemnation that can be made of our generation globally. We continue to have a world that is segregated regrettably between those who came first and whose image the global order is now set and i really had promised not to use this phrase, but i have to deviate that regrettably we are seeing a global order in which we live that is simply the embalming of the old colonial order that existed at the time of the establishment of these institutions.

And we have therefore to ask ourselves, whether we are in a position to deliver on the peace that would permit us all to live in just and a just an inclusive society, in each of our countries or whether we are in fact creating a world where peace is elusive peace both in terms of security but also peace that comes from economic justice, and we have therefore to ask ourselves whether therefore we can live in this global order and what am I saying as is suggested by the very theme before us we know that a transformative agenda is required absolutely but it depends on all of us and the question therefore must be are we ready to exercise the global moral leadership the commitment and the political will necessary strategically that will allow us to pursue the transformative agenda in order for us to be able to reinvent the global order.

My friends, a global order regrettably today perpetuates the first and the second class countries of which I spoke in Accra and in fact not in Accra on Umon The Cape Coast, two sundays ago largely, because that is our reality, we have faced the world that has cemented the right of a few to determine the fate of the rest of us.

Is that acceptable to any of us in our families, in our communities, or in our countries and if it is not acceptable in our families, in our communities, and in our countries, I submit to you that it has no place in the global order.

The ultimate absurdity of what I'm saying is amplified when we look at the arrangements, that led to the P5 within the context of the security council.

How do five countries? Have the right to veto that which others want to see.

Happen similarly, how do we understand that in our world there must always be somebody to guard the guard in the Caribbean?

We ask it simply, who can guard the guard if there is no one looking over those who claim to have that superior voice and superior wisdom then who protectsthe rest of us?

My friends, this is a global order that is compromising equally our right to development our right and ability and capacity to attain the sustainable development goals that each and everyone of our countries has submitted.

Is critical for our populations in order for them to prosper, if we don't recognize that the time is now for us to find solutions with respect to long-term financing, instruments not 5 10 15 2050 70 and 80. In the same way, that britain and other countries were required to find them as they went forward in a post-world war world, where they recognized that they could not pursue development, at the same time as they had to service the debts of the war. It is no different for the rest of our countries, who fight battle now the pandemic, who battled now the climate crisis and who must now battle theconsequences of war in europe.

Simply, put if we have to service that debt that we have incurred in the last two years. Then, we do not have the position and the capacity to borrow to finance our development with respect to the sustainable development goals by 2030. It will become an illusion regrettably for many, I pause also at this point to reflect that post-world war, in the advanced countries of the world agreed that Germany should not have to service debt in excess of five percent of their exports, but yet today, in our own country, in small island developing states that number is in excess of 30 percent.

I ask simply, where is the justice that we speak of? I could go further and refer to the letter that was in The Guardian newspaper only two days ago, that calls on the world to reflect on whether or not Ukraine's debt should not be completely written off given the humanitarian tragedy that that country is facing.

But, I ask us to not forget that they are not the first country to have faced such humanitarian crises, and if we are going to open our hearts to the concept of how we treat to issue of debt and financing, then I say now is the time for the long-term instruments to be able to reflect the horror of what so many of us have endured during the course of the last two years.

A pandemic compounded by a climate crisisis, nothing to play with regrettably, also we continue to ignore the voices of other developing countries in the same way that we ignore the voice of labor. The workers, our citizens are so many issues globally when in most instances what are they really trying to do, to make requests that are morally, just to make requests that are morally just as you know in the WTO labour's voice has been insistent on the need for social dialogue to ensure that our trade policy that we settle, upon reflects the interest of all and that the be a just floor for competition that enforces labor and environmental standards for whom not for aliens, but for ordinary people.

In whose interests we are committed to serve, so as we consider this question I want to suggest as we all know that the war, that the invasion of Ukraine has in fact reset the global order, the old–one.

I've shown enough, is simply not working not delivering on peace, not delivering on prosperity, not delivering on stability, and indeed we do so because the events of recent times literally come after 20 years of what a global financial crisis. The release of unprecedented amounts of liquidity a rapid climate change, and climate-related disaster world or as I like to call it a climate crisis in which we find our selves a COVID–19 pandemic and without prejudice to all of that, the work that we are now doing to avert the next pandemic, the slow motion pandemic on antimicrobial resistance which you referred to earlier that I'm working along with the WTO and Dr. Tedros, to be able to see how we can fight the super viruses that are already killing in excess of 1 million people annually, and is expected to kill more people by 2050 than any other condition.

My friends, while we have not had what some call a world war. We have truly had a world of wars, a world of conflicts where millions of innocent victims civilians have been the casualties it's, a shame that it takes this European theater to make us respond to the illegal state aggression with global sanctions. It is a shame that it takes this theater to provide a warm welcome to refugees, a welcome which ought to have been our human response to all refugees all along, and not just today. But never the less better late than never, for the plight of migrants is not one that they accept willingly, it is one that has foisted on them because of circumstances beyond their control irrespective of whether those circumstances come from climate or man-made causes.

My friends, it is no wonder that many of our young people globally have lost faith, in this order, in this global order because of what they view as patent hypocrisy. I've been in public life through many of these swirling and short times and my life has witnessed first hand yes, the failure of the international order to respond where we need it to respond.

Most the countries and global and regional institutions, should have listened to the canaries which we consider ourselves a small island developing states, long long–time ago, but regrettably we are now at risk of disappearing or dying because of the confluence of events that the world now sees unimpeded nations will choose, greater financial energy food and national security by retreating behind national and regional lines of defence.

That's what I referred to last year, and regrettably rather than us seeing an improvement in our circumstances. We have seen the circumstances literally worsened before our very eyes. The inconvenient truth for those of us who support a liberal international order, is that maybe, maybe some good may come from crisis, maybe we may develop more a diversified and therefore more robust financial system, if we finally listen about the need for different instruments that are appropriate to the conditions in which most of our countries find ourselves. We hope that it will also accelerate the pace of the transition to renewable energy, because we know what fossil fuels alone will do, although we are conscious too that the discussion is nuanced and that a fossil fuel a net zero world does not mean a fossil fuel free world.

But simply, one where fossil fuels don't exceed more than 20 percent of the overall mix and that carries us into other discussions that I don't have time today to deal with similar lye, we have to determine whether we are going to eat healthier and less processed foods, because we have to eat fresher food because of the supply disruption that is now upon us, with the global supply chain there will be better results for our bodies, I suspect than if we had continued to eat the processed foods, but a contradiction in all of this is that would this be a defeat of internationalism at a time when we need internationalism and multilateralism more than ever.

Can we achieve those other things, without having to accept that the only route to them is through the defeat of multilateralism? I believe that we can and we can not therefore retreat from that, internationalism even if in some instances it requires us to take difficult decisions that we might not otherwise be willing to take.

There is no safety behind the line, none whatsoever and in an inclusive international trading system, that we all accept is critical to solving many of the problems we face. We then must ask ourselves, how do we move from this position today?

I want to share with you in a few minutes, very briefly, my thoughts on the role of trade in the solutions to two of the most significant transitions facing humanity and to look at how the WTO can be and must be in the vanguard of that change, that we all need.

A comment on the absolute need for us to bring the architecture of a new global order to the 21st century, one that is transparent that is fair and that is rooted in moral legitimacy, one of the most profound transitions facing the world that we live in today is the rise of the new digital empires. You have to call them empires, the world carries out an increasing proportion of its trade on digital platforms and the digital trade changes the geography of trade and allows for the high mobility of people, technology and services.

The digital world is highly concentrated, they are essentially nine leading digital platforms, using their brand names what are they: Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba.

Even more striking these nine are also essentially owned and controlled by a small handful–handful of individuals, these are companies that are now today more powerful than the seven sisters were when that conglomerates, when those conglomerates were broken up almost a century ago. Never before has the global economy seen so much concentration of economic power in so so so few hands, and there's a paradox to blame though a few individuals have benefited astronomically their business model is shaped by what by the state's data governance models.

The business model is that the firms must provide free services in return for freely using the user's data, it has been called: third party funded barter. And this model exists in china too, though with greater collaboration between the state and the companies at least explicitly, so whether deliberately or not what is the reality here in Europe; Europe disrupts this model through its data privacy laws to some extent they shift data ownership from the platform back to the user, the larger the market the more value that free data has to those who assemble products from that data they are substantial economies of scale considering these two issues, the data governance model and the economies of scale.